


hear you scream

by chromaberrant



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: ...if i can make it happen, Alien Abduction, Alien/Human Relationships, Alternate Universe - Space, Body Modification, Eventual Smut, M/M, Rating May Change, Space Horror, Xenomorphs (Alien Series), playing fast loose and horny with what little i remember of the alien franchise yee haw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:49:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29118534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromaberrant/pseuds/chromaberrant
Summary: Space AU — Connor's outpost on an uninhabited planet has gone dark. Chief engineer Gavin Reed takes the risk to investigate on the ground.
Relationships: Connor/Gavin Reed
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	hear you scream

**Author's Note:**

> cheers, esteemed robotfuckers, i am tipsy & extremely frustrated with the fact i axed about 5k words' worth of follow-up for this (In Which They Were Supposed To Fuck, but I Forgot How To Write) so clearly impulsively posting what might constitute a chapter in itself is the thing to do in these circumstances! *slips on dollar store sunglasses and skateboards off into the sunset, despite it being long past sundown & indoors*
> 
> anyway! nothing outright horny happening here. if i ever get through writing the funky alien intercourse this whole thing was intended to be, it'll be in chapter two, but _if_ is the key word in this statement.
> 
> inspired by art by unparalleled creaturexiii. you [know](https://twitter.com/CreatureXIII/status/1217756881931902976) [the](https://twitter.com/CreatureXIII/status/1214627486363013120) [ones](https://twitter.com/CreatureXIII/status/1216362272886599681). 
> 
> hunt me for sport on tweeter or discord if ur into that kinda thing wen ur done xo

"So you're just going to fucking... write him off? Move on?"

Elijah looked pained. "We cannot afford to risk human lives on a rescue mission down there. The android will be fine, Gav, and we can order replacements. They're resilient, adaptable, they have backups—"

"He’s cut off!" Gavin yelled. "The whole base could be a goddamn smoking crater for all we know, what if there aren't backups?" He clenched his teeth, hating the way his voice cracked.

Elijah was quiet. A troubled look passed over his features. He was not a man given to shows of emotion, or much empathy at all, but Gavin could tell he was making an effort to be considerate right now. "Then you would be putting yourself in danger for nothing," he said carefully. "I know you... got attached to the 800, but..."

"Do _not_ give me that shit," Gavin snarled. "Just don't. You kept Chloe here. You don't... You don't get to say shit about caring to me." He turned on his heel and marched out of the ship’s bridge.

Fucking _replacements_. Elijah had grown too cocky with his inventions. Gavin had thought he gave a shit about the wonders of technology he'd created to bolster humanity's space conquest, but evidently the androids were nothing more than expendable tools to him. 

He should be blaming the corporate grunts dictating their missions these days, but Gavin was too incensed to think clearly. Connor was alone in that tiny base planetside, stranded, possibly destroyed — body and mind — and Gavin... Gavin couldn't take it. 

A wounded sound wrenched itself from his chest. The stupid bot had saved his life too many times. Stuck around and helped to kill time, despite how gruff Gavin had been in an attempt to scare him away. Slowly but surely proved his personhood — with his quick wit, his curiosity, his compassion. Stole into Gavin’s heart and held him in his arms, quiet and caring and _there_ when no one else would be. He didn't deserve to be given up on.

* * *

"Chief engineer? What are you doing?" 

"I'm coming for him, Chloe. I don't care what Elijah said." Gavin stormed across the airlock threshold and slammed his palm on the door control panel. The insulated gate slid shut with a muffled hiss.

"I can't assist in your mission," the RT600's soft tones followed Gavin from one speaker to the next, indifferent to physical barriers. "That would be mutiny."

"I know, Chlo." Gavin bent his head and breathed roughly. Composed himself, then manually opened the expedition shuttle's doors and ducked inside. 

"...Good luck, Gavin. Come back."

"Thanks."

* * *

It didn’t occur to him to document his findings until he was deep in the facility’s core, manually restarting the climate control subsystem. It would take up to an hour to filter out the air — Gavin had time, and could use it to make a report. He thumbed on his comm and started a recording. 

“Gavin Reed, chief engineer of DSEV Detroit. Year eighty three, day fifty three standard. I sure hope this isn’t the last anyone hears from me.” He coughed on a dry laugh. “Ditched the mothership to check on RK800 three days after communication was lost with outpost Prometheus on planet— whatever. You’re looking at it if you’re hearing this. No one’s named it yet.

“Found outpost intact so far, except for a breached airlock. Outer door destroyed, looked like something crashed through. No sign of any vehicle wreckage that I saw — only… an alien, I guess. Some Giger-ass looking motherfucker, kind of mechanical, didn’t have time to look. Dead by blaster fire. Connor must have got it.”

Gavin inhaled deeply. He hoped the recorder didn’t pick up on how shaky the sound was.

He hadn’t found Connor yet. The uncertainty curdled in his stomach, set him on edge. He passed the android’s charging docks, where his backup bodies would idle if not in use, and found them empty. 

The air filters shuddered to life. Something clanged elsewhere in the facility, the sound echoing. 

“Right,” Gavin said to himself. “Cool. That’s great.”

He allowed himself a few seconds to rein in his nerves. Sweat clung to his neck and the small of his back. 

“I sealed the airlock’s inner door,” he picked up his report, ”restarted the climate control. No sign of Connor, either any of the bodies or AI in the system. Outpost OS keeps glitching out, looks like there’s something overloading it if I try to access a terminal. I’m going to get into the central processing hub, see what shakes loose if I hard reboot from there.”

He ended the recording and sent a copy to the shuttle’s onboard computer. No use sending it directly to the Detroit yet. Gavin was in no mood to hear Elijah’s inevitable hissy fit about insubordination and first contact protocol. 

He had more important things to worry about first. Staying alive. Finding Connor.

He crept down the sterile, off-white corridors with his heart in his throat and his hand on his gun. The hum of the air filtration hub faded as he left it behind, and the silence rang in his ears. His footsteps, though soft as he could make them, seemed to echo. 

He reached a door marked as command center. He had managed to pull up a map of the facility on entry, before the terminal shut down on him — if what he gleaned was any indication, the servers would be in a room just beyond that.

The door slid aside and revealed a massacre.

“Jesus Christ, Connor,” Gavin choked out and unholstered his gun. 

Two android bodies were strewn about on the floor, torn apart into pieces. The blue blood had already evaporated, leaving behind an oddly goreless display of biocomponents. 

Gavin resolutely kept his eyes above the wreckage, circling the room until he was certain he was alone. He knelt beside one of the carcasses. -56, Connor’s current — or rather, last known — primary body. Its chassis was cracked open. The innards had been torn out and its limbs stripped of synthetic flesh, only cracked parts of the outer shell remaining. With mounting terror, Gavin noted what looked like teeth marks on the plastic. The android’s eyes were glassy, lifeless, but the face contorted in an expression of rage. This one went down fighting.

The other was barely better off. Its chest plate was gone, with biocomponents removed as if by an inquisitive but impatient child: some whole, with ports intact, some ripped out with force. The entire facial structure was lifted to expose the mechanisms and circuitry housed inside the cranium. Gavin traced the edge of the mask, something in his chest lurching at the serene look of it.

He was no stranger to android innards. He might be the second most knowledgeable human in the entire known galaxy in that regard.

A cold rage sang in his blood at the thought of Connor being violated like this.

His exosuit HUD notified him that the air was now breathable. Gavin pulled his helmet off with a grunt. The faintly electric scent of thirium assaulted his nose. He started another recording, all but snarling his findings into the comm in clipped sentences.

There were two other RK800s somewhere out there. Connor wasn’t dead yet.

Gavin had to hope.

He found the server room and went through the motions of restarting the OS core in a daze, anger and fear warring for dominance and making his hands shake. The lights went out when the system shut down, plunging the space into a blue-tinted shadowscape of emergency lighting. The computers around Gavin quietened. Hot plastic clicked and creaked as it cooled. 

Gavin told himself the feeling of being watched was just paranoia.

He placed his gun on the console to strip out of the top of his exosuit. As far as armor went, it was a sleek, ergonomic design, but still clunky and hot, and he was sweating like a pig under the reinforced layers. 

It was stupid, perhaps, but it wasn’t like the kevlar and graphene would do much to stop those talons. At least if his suit was whole, he could use its emergency life support mechanisms to call the cavalry and patch himself up.

If he lived that long.

He secured the sleeves of the suit around his waist and depressed the power button of the main console. One by one, he heard the stacks of electronics come to life. The boot sequence ran as it should on the main screen.

Gavin put in his credentials to authorize the procedure when prompted.

 **GAVIN REED** , the terminal flashed back at him.

Unnerving.

“Connor?” he asked softly. The display froze, glitched. Went dark. 

Gavin lurched toward the power button again, but the screen lit up before he could decide whether to press it. Ones and zeroes flooded in, then switched to ASCII, then to actual lines of code. For an indeterminate stretch of time, Gavin watched in helpless confusion as the operating system seemed to recompile itself. 

Finally, the desktop loaded. Gavin’s shoulders loosened, then tensed again as he took the familiar UI in — except every string was replaced by his name.

“Jesus shittin’ Christ on a bike,” Gavin murmured, fingers frozen above the keyboard. “Connor? Are you here?”

Something clattered in the command room. Gavin whipped around, gun at the ready. He stalked forward.

He would get Connor back, or get the piece of shit that mauled him. 

The room was bright. He could hear something moving — the click of plastic and metal, a wet squelch. Like a predator feeding on its prey, if the prey was clad in synthetic chassis. Instinct almost rooted Gavin in place, but he snarled and kept moving.

“Show yourself, asshole,” he spat. The noises ceased. A thick black cord moved— 

Gavin sucked in a breath. The alien. The one at the airlock had a tail like this too.

A black shape unfurled from behind a worktable, rising to its feet.

“No,” Gavin breathed. His hands started shaking. 

The alien was wearing Connor’s face.

More of his form, too: its silhouette looked humanoid, barring the tail. It leaned on the table and jumped up on it with catlike grace, more fluid than even Connor ever could.

“Con?” Gavin asked weakly. The… being in front of him only tilted its head. It felt like a mockery of Connor’s familiar quirk. Gavin felt sick. 

This wasn’t Connor.

The thing wearing his android’s face released a series of clicks he couldn’t decipher, then launched toward him. Gavin yelped, flight instinct taking over, and lurched back. There was a short corridor behind him, but as he turned and ran for it, the door on the far end slammed shut. 

His breath left him in harsh wheezes as he crashed against the smooth white surface and tried to open the way, but the access panel went black, filling with **GAVIN REED** instead of the default palm outline. He fired one shot into the lock mechanism, but all he got for his trouble was a blast of heat against his hands and a door that was now fused shut. Fuck.

He turned around. “You’re not gonna steal my face too,” he snarled. The gun’s muzzle was hot against the underside of his jaw.

His trigger finger twitched. The alien froze in its tracks, hissing and clicking. 

Connor’s— _its_ —lips moved, as if to speak. The clicks morphed into something crackly, more familiar, until:

“Do— Not.”

It was blinking. The eyelids fluttered, the same way— the same way Connor’s always did— 

The LED on the temple was still there, Gavin realized, and it was blazing a furious red. 

He didn’t have time to think what a fool he was for hoping it meant something. The second the weapon went down, the alien was on him, tail whipping out to wrap around his waist and claws grating against the door where they pinned his wrists to the sides. His gun clattered to the floor.

He might have sobbed. His breath was uneven, his pulse rabbitlike under Connor-not-Connor’s nose. He felt hollow, abandoned by sense, mind rattling only with the vague thought that he came out all this way to watch the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend become something other, something that was about to rip his throat out.

He went slack in the alien’s grip when a hot tongue found his skin. Wet heat crossed his jugular, swept up his jaw. Rasped against stubble, three days coarse with how he hadn’t taken the time to shave since Prometheus went dark. Another lick caught the corner of his mouth — and, as if the sensation wasn’t bizarre enough, Gavin’s mind sparked with all those times Connor had been close, his pretty lips a siren’s call to touch, to taste, to put that over-engineered analysis suite to all the wrong uses. He shivered.

“Gavi—in.” Connor? Not Connor? crackled, right into Gavin’s ear. “Mine.”

“Please.” Gavin’s voice was little more than a breath trapped in his throat.

Connor’s face hovered an inch or so away from his, inhuman eyes taking in every detail. Gavin searched them; for what, he didn’t know. The sclera had turned black, the illusion of white and brown gone to reveal the familiar mechanics of android optical technology, but it did little to quash the bright thread of uncertainty in Gavin’s mind. That curiosity, the quicksilver gaze, focused and faraway all at once as he compiled data and drew conclusions — he’d seen it countless times before. He’d resented it, then appreciated it, then admired it.

“Who are you,” Gavin whispered. More plea than question.

His answer was silence. The breath against his lips was hot, so hot. 

Next thing he knew, there was an even warmer mouth on his; an insistent, blunt pressure at first, then movement, and slick saliva that tasted like fire and metal, and a careful hunger so much like his own.

“Connor,” he gasped. It felt the only word that mattered anymore. 

Hard knuckles dug into the sides of his neck. He twitched, sluggish instinct pushing him to react to the hold cutting off bloodflow, but he barely managed to bring up a hand to Connor’s chest before darkness swept over his senses.

“Mine,” he thought he heard again, and then he blacked out.


End file.
